Fans of Bruce Willis were heartbroken when it was announced the Die Hard star would be retiring from acting due to an ongoing battle with aphasia which was then updated to include frontotemporal dementia. While fans only learned of the initial diagnosis last year, his family now realizes that they saw the first signs of it years ago, including having a family joke regarding hearing loss that they blamed on Die Hard.
Bruce Willis’ daughter Tallulah Willis has a new piece in Vogue where she speaks candidly about her own struggles with mental health as well as her father’s current health. She says that the aphasia he’s dealing with now initially presented as what they thought was hearing loss. Willis would not respond when spoken to and they assumed it was the result of hearing loss from all the explosions from his action movies. Tallulah explained…
It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears.’ Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he’d lost interest in me.
It’s not uncommon for the early symptoms of some medical issue to not be noticed and be chalked up to something less significant. And it wouldn’t exactly be a shock if Bruce Willis had suffered some hearing loss thanks to making the Die Hard films as well as the numerous other action projects on his resume. As his daughter said here, “Hollywood hearing loss” is sort of a known thing, as movie sets can be quite loud and so hearing can certainly be damaged.
But as things would progress, it would eventually be realized that Bruce Willis’ problems were more significant than hearing loss. Rather than not responding to his family because he did not hear them, he was actually in the early stages of aphasia, which makes understanding language difficult.
Tallulah Willis’ comments also give us a bit of insight into the struggles of those that have to deal with a family member suffering through this. She didn’t understand what was going on initially, she was only a teenager at the time, and she admits that she took his lack of response to her personally.
With Bruce Willis’ dementia diagnosis earlier this year we know that the actor’s health will continue to decline, it’s a sad fact of the illness he’s dealing with. It will be very difficult for his family, though perhaps having a true understanding of what is going on will make it all a tiny bit easier. Willis’ wife has continued to update fans about how Bruce is doing, but Emma Heming Willis has also been candid about how difficult things have been.
One thing we know for sure is that Bruce Willis has a lot of fans who will also support him. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently spoke about the career of Bruce Willis and what it has meant to Hollywood. Those movies, including Die Hard, will live on.